


As Good A Place As Any

by Tozette



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, I Don't Even Know, Mission Fic, One Shot, Zombies, also drunk, blanket permission for podfic or translation, horror themes, my Tsunade is always grumpy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1907631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura-pov short fic. Konoha deals with a zombie-virus outbreak in Fire Country. </p><p>Because I can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Good A Place As Any

Hissori was a sweet village tucked away in a valley in the heart of Fire Country, and as far as Sakura was concerned it should have been perfectly safe for civilians to go about their business there. 

Reports of a debilitating plague were... unexpected.

Reconnaissance and medical assessment were required.

Even from the safe distance Sakura had determined, the people of Hissori looked _bad_ : grey skin, dull eyes, hair coming free in clumps. Some of them had a slippery-soft look, as though whatever was beneath the skin was far squishier than flesh. Sakura knew without further investigation that those were write-offs. If they weren’t dead yet, well, they soon would be.

Naruto - one of many Narutos - dumped another of the plague’s crazed victims into their big, hastily-constructed wooden cage.

The pair of them had quickly discovered, through the judicious use of clones (which, after all, could not get sick), that the infected people of Hissori struggled when confronted by ninja - but not to get away.

They tried to get _closer_. And then they tried to start gnawing on their shinobi captors, making strange wheezing grunts and whines.

Medical assessment had proven almost impossible due to the sheer lack of patient cooperation.

It had taken four Naruto clones to get even the most basic medical data from one of them: pulse, reflexes, responsiveness to light.

He’d lost two of the clones to gnashing human teeth before they were done.

Sakura shaded her eyes and peered into the cage for a second.

There were only three of them in there, but they reached for Naruto with mindless determination. A hand clawed the clone’s arm and he disappeared in a swirl of chakra smoke. Again.

Next to her, the real Naruto made a disgusted face as the clone’s memories hit him. “Is that enough?” he wondered.

“I think so,” said Sakura, and ignored the way his shoulders sagged in relief. “Let’s get them back to Tsunade-sama.”

They’d get them back to Konoha, and then Tsunade could have them gagged and strapped down to tables and examine them to her heart’s content. Doubtless she’d come up with some miraculous cure.

 

* * *

 

“They won’t die,” said Tsunade over a truly enormous bottle of sake, the evening one day after Sakura’s return from the mission to Hissori.

She blinked. “You tried to kill the patients?”

“No,” said Tsunade, glowering at her grumpily. “The disease killed the patients. It just didn’t stop them.”

“Is it like Edo Ten--”

“Don’t be ridiculous, not even Orochimaru’s this insane,” Tsunade growled. She thumped the bottle onto her desk with too much force. The desk creaked, but somehow the bottle held fast.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sakura informed her, perching on the edge of the chair across from her mentor’s, the desk and its half-full bottle between them.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Well...”

“They don’t even blink! We killed the third one ourselves to find out if there was some trick to it, but there isn’t! They just keep on trying to eat you.”

Sakura’s mouth twisted in disgust. The strangely squishy-looking people she’d seen at Hissori made a lot more sense now. Flesh, liquefied under the skin.

“Do you have any ideas?” Sakura asked, feeling stumped and out of her depth.

“Not right now, Sakura,” said Tsunade darkly. “Right now, I have sake. Tomorrow I’ll have ideas.”

 

* * *

 

“I have an idea,” announced Tsunade, glowering through her hangover at the assembled forces of Sakura, Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi.

They stood at attention. Or, well, actually, Sakura stood at attention. Naruto was still yawning himself awake. Kakashi was slouched against the wall next to the door. Sasuke looked like he’d been carved from stone, leaning back on his hips with his hands jammed into his pockets.

“Your mission is this,” Tsunade said, apparently totally unconcerned by their attitude. “Go back to Hissori, barricade everyone in and set it on fire.”

“EHH? Baa-chan, what about all the people?”

She turned her eyes grimly on Naruto. “Brat, that’s what the barricade’s for.”

“You can’t just burn them all alive!” he protested.

“The disease isn’t curable,” she said flatly, “and the dead keep walking around infecting the living. It’s almost undetectable in the early stages, and by the time the late stages arrive -” she waved a hand vaguely.

“They’re already trying to... pass it on,” Sakura filled in.

“Pass it on?” Sasuke echoed.

He hadn’t been there, she supposed. “Bite people,” she supplied.

“Eat people,” Tsunade corrected. “They don’t even leave the bones, unless they don’t have enough teeth left.”

Sakura was comfortable with never, ever knowing how Tsunade had discovered this.

Meanwhile, Naruto was scowling at the floor, trembling gently with - something. Anger, stress, frustration. “Baa-chan, there must be _something_ you can do...” he said tightly. There was a waver in his voice.

“Idiot,” sighed Tsunade, slumping so her chin rested in her hand. “When a ninja has a gangrenous leg, a good medic-nin doesn’t leave it there and hope for the best; she cuts it off. The leg is gone, but the ninja is saved.”

“So?” Naruto demanded, looking back up.

“It’s the same with Hissori,” she responded, waving one hand. “We can’t help the people who are already at risk, so we need to cut our losses and save what we can.”

Naruto’s face twisted into an expression somewhere between ‘horrified’ and ‘mulish’. “But -”

Kakashi’s hand fell heavily on his shoulder - and on Sakura’s. She tensed at the unexpected contact, then slowly relaxed. It was just Kakashi-sensei.

“Saa... you’re a ninja, Naruto,” Kakashi said, sounding as though the topic was as interesting as discussing the weather. “Sometimes ninja get hard missions.”

Naruto dropped his eyes, although his expression was still a defiant glower. “I _know_ that,” he said.

Sasuke snorted softly. “Idiot,” he muttered. Then he shouldered his pack, turned on his heel and left Tsunade’s office.

Kakashi glanced after him, then snapped a salute to Tsunade and followed, propelling Naruto in front of him.

Once it was just Tsunade and Sakura, she paused. Hesitantly, she said, “Ne, shishou...”

“Mmm?” Tsunade looked up from contemplating the deep mysteries inside her empty sake bottle.

“You’re sure, right?”

She fixed her eyes on Sakura. There was a second’s silence.

“Aa,” she said. “I’m sure.”

Sakura nodded.

She closed the door behind her with a click.

 

* * *

 

It was marked B-rank, but an organised genin team probably could have completed the mission.

Sakura didn’t bother telling Naruto that the rank was because you had to give ninja extra pay for genocide. He’d probably feel better not knowing.

It was simple enough for a ninja to avoid the grasping hands and gaping mouths of diseased villagers, so they raced through and across the village with relative impunity, stringing explosive tags and barrels of ANFO along in their wake.

Sakura retreated to the treeline when she was out of tags, only to find that Kakashi had beat her there. He was slumped against the trunk of a tree, peering down at his book.

Sakura wanted to ask him why he wasn’t bothered by the mission.

But, well -

He grew up in the war.

She might not like the answer.

Sometimes Sakura thought that a lot of the shinobi lifestyle involved maintaining optimum mental health by not asking too many hard questions.

So instead of asking, she settled into a crouch nearby and together they waited for their team mates. Naruto was the last to arrive, and when he did he was uncommonly quiet.

Of the four of them, Kakashi was the only one with any reasonable skill at earth-type jutsu. Sakura watched from the treeline, perched high up to peer down the valley at Hissori, as a deep rush of chakra pulled an enormous wall of rock into place around the city.

Kakashi was sweating when they fell in beside him, but the wall was easily twenty feet. From the corner of her eye, Sakura saw him sway on his feet.

She bumped her shoulder against his gently.

He didn’t lean in, but he glanced at her.

His visible eye curved into a crescent.

“Sasuke,” he said.

Sasuke didn’t hesitate: he leapt to the top of the wall of earth, flicked through a series of hand seals and took a deep breath.

 

* * *

 

Hissori burned.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not really sure how or why this happened. But I like the idea, maybe I'll do it properly one day.


End file.
